Blogging Phenomenon

Blog as current phenomenon and benefits to the community

“Weblog”, also known as “blog” is generally known as personal website which serves as a personal diary or journal. A blogger is a person who keeps and updates a weblog (WordNet 2009) whereas the process of updating a blog with regular entries is known as “blogging”.

It was said that the emergence of the first blog was in 1992. Blogs did not really start to take off until the late nineties. After 2000, blogs started to gain popularity (Ng 2007) and the amount of blogs created each day had been increasing rapidly ever since. Figure 1 shows the amount of blogs created since 2002 and through the statistics; it is proven that blogs have become a trend around the world.

Figure 1

There are many different types of blogs these days. To name a few, some of the examples of blogs include personal blogs, education blogs, business blogs and political blogs. In Malaysia, political blogs have started to become popular and candidates and politicians who own a blog have clearly affected the people’s choice in the General Election back in March 2008. Some of the well-known political blogs available in Malaysia include:-

1. Politics 101 Malaysia
2. Che Det (Former Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad)
3. Lim Kit Siang for Malaysia
4. Screen Shots (Jeff Ooi)
5. Rocky’s Bru (Ahirudin Attan)
6. Chua Soi Lek – Change to Move Forward

In Europe, blogs were still less popular and unfamiliar to some of the people back in 2006. According to research, the reason why the reading rate is low was due the lack of trust towards blogs (Brook 2006). However nowadays, the popularity of blogging has also increased in Europe.

No doubt blogs have created an impact towards the community. For instance, Malaysia General Election 2008 was affected by political blogs. People blog for many reasons, to name a few, it is use as a hobby, for business purposes, to meet and connect with people. Thus, no doubt that blogging has created an impact towards the community.

References

2009, ‘WordNet Search’, Princeton University, viewed 17 November 2009,

<http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=blogger⊂=Search+WordNet&o2=&o0=1&o7=&o5=&o1=1&o6=&o4=&o3=&h=>

Brook, S 2006, ‘Blogs struggle to impress in UK’, guardian.co.uk, viewed 17 November 2009, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/jun/20/pressandpublishing.newmedia>

Ng, 2007, ‘What are blogs?’, WiseGeek, viewed 17 November 2009,

<http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-blogs.htm>